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Hey fic, how are you?
That first line meme is going around. I never think much or care about first lines, but I went and looked at mine anyway, and they sucked. Then I thought, even though I suck at it, I should dig up first lines I loved from other fics--and came up with exactly nil. It's not that you folks haven't written some great first lines; I'm sure you have. It's just that I, personally, dislike first lines.
I just wanna be inside the story already; I don't actually like the slow get-to-know-you dance; the "do I like you/do you like me?" kind of thing. I hate it in real life too. I hate meeting people and I hate, "So what do you do? Are you married? Where did you go to school?" I even hate the, "How are you?" part of conversations, because the part of a conversation where you get to talking about how someone really is isn't until the meaty part of a conversation, which is often in the middle. (Even if someone answers, "How are you?" with "Dismal!" the part that's interesting is why.)
Re: getting-to-know-you--about people, I make snap judgments and find it hard to shake first impressions. I know this is wrong. The only way I've been able to adjust is not act on those judgments, or say anything about them. I just have to deal with them living in my head, knowing they're false, and this means I can't form any real opinion at all about anybody for quite some time. It just makes me impatient to get to the part where they've had a bunch of chances so I can see the ways in which they are truly good, fun, and educational (because people almost always turn out good, fun, and educational. I've rarely had it happen that they don't, which is nice).
Now, books don't always turn out good, fun, or educational, but so often they're one of the three. Sometimes they're educational in ways they're not meant to be (for instance, I read the Twilight series partly to educate myself about pop culture, other viewpoints, what kind of thing tickles other people's id. I've got to admit those books were fun, too, but also not in the way that they were probably meant to be). But the beginning parts of books now just feels like a slog up until the part where I really get invested, either in the characters or the plot or some kind of theme that is important to me.
I used to love starting new books. I remember I read Romeo and Juliet on my own in sixth grade. I found it pretty difficult, but as is usually the case with Shakespeare and me, I slowly slid into it until I didn't have to stop to "translate" anything at all. It was like learning a new language, and I loved that. When I'd read Victorian novels and high fantasy in high school, I loved those big walls of text wherein you don't know anyone and don't really understand the world or culture and can't really grasp the scope of the novel you're reading, and then slowly a plot emerges and you get to know characters you love (and hate) and it's this entire world you're living in.
But it's this that annoys me now. I know I know the language and want to speak it. I know I love that world and want to be in it. But instead I have to sit there and get these slow lessons on how to speak and what to say, as if each time I'm learning to be a part of a new culture, when I've already been a part of so many other cultures that I've lost count. These "lessons" (and my frustration with them) are not inherent to the specific text. They're inherent to myself, when it comes to language (i.e., I'm the one who has to learn; they don't have to teach me), and inherent to the whole idea of reading, when it comes to getting to know the world (i.e. every text is gonna put you in a new world that is singular to that text. Even fanfic does that!).
This might explain some of my eventual impatience with high fantasy (though the rest of it can be explained by a lot of repetition in the genre). I wonder what it has to do with fanfic? With fanfic, you don't have to get to know the characters or the world. All the introduction you've got to suffer through is that author's version of the characters and world, and where they're going to go with them.
I still have an easier time getting into fanfic than I do getting into original stuff, but I've got to say that two of my favorite fic authors of all time were authors whose fics I really had trouble getting into at first. One (![[profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
kita0610) because she had a singular style that was unfamiliar to me, and the other (mistful) because she had a singular characterization that was unfamiliar to me. While I'd been reading fanfic for years and years when I found both of these authors, I still think I had more patience then than I do now, and I was still too impatient to deal with getting-to-know-you at first. And these authors still stand out to me, both in fandom, but also out of all things that I've read. I'm sure there are other authors (both in fandom and out) who are as good, but there's still no other authors like them. It has to do with an originality, which requires a getting-to-know-you-process.
But now that I'm thinking about it, there are fics where I feel like I really don't have to get-to-know that much. Insterestingly, this is less because the fics are "so canon" and rather because they're "so fanon". I've read about a thousand fics like it before and I'll probably read a thousand more.
This is the case with a lot of genre stuff too--you know, you just know, how a romance novel is going to go--but with genre pro fic you've still got to "get to know" the characters. You've got to be able to tell Cecilia apart from Margaret; you've got to know that Cecilia's the dark-haired buxom lass who's interested in Roger, and you've got to know that Roger's the knife thrower at the circus. Sometimes I think the packaging on romance novels, especially the blurbs and summaries, are to cut down on the irksome work of get-to-know-you, so you can get to the part where Cecilia ends up with Roger and Margaret tragically dies faster. It ups the comfort and lessens the work to get there.
Which is probably when I'm just looking for something really mindless to entertain me, I gravitate towards fanfic. You already know the names, descriptions, and who's going to end up with whom, which is more than you know most times on the first page of a romance novel. Romance AU fanfics are particularly comforting, because you're getting all the comfortingly predictable tropes of romance and the comforting predictability of who the characters are, what they look like, how they act and interact, etc.
Not liking beginnings is essentially lazy of me. I don't want to do the work to figure out what an author is doing, where a story is going to go, how the style will work out, who the characters are, etc. There's a lot to be learned in those parts of a story, just like meeting a person; it's instructive and mind-bending and really healthy.
That said, I do love a deeper get to know you. I hate learning your name and profession and what you did last night, but man, I do love learning why you love what you love and why you do the things you do and what your childhood was like. I love working beside someone for a year or two, that point when friendly acquaintance tips into friendship and you start hanging out and talking about things that are meaningful to you, when you only used to talk about work. Etc. All that stuff's great, and I tend to be way too circumspect and terrified of being awkward to jump right into the sort of questions and conversations I care about. Just like I'm terrified to skip the first chapter of a book.
But anyway, I just don't think about first lines that much, or first paragraphs. I know that readers who aren't me can be drawn in or tossed out by a first line, but oftentimes by the time I get to the first line, I'm already willing to read for at least a thousand words. After looking at my last twenty first lines, which sucked, I tried to find the ones I thought were my best. They were all meta:
Even though it's not meta, I still like:
. . . though I actually like the second line of this fic much better. The rhythm never was quite right in the first line.
My best first line is probably, the following:
It presents the main characters, gives you some background info, and also presents a very interesting situation that immediately has you asking questions. Why would you tell someone you gave them truth serum, does that mean the person gets a choice to drink it, or did he say that because he drank the wine, etc. Except I find it a total bore; that fic doesn't get interesting to me until you learn the answers to those questions; the first line isn't so well-phrased or delivered that you can be assured you're going to get interesting answers to the questions it presents.
When I think about literature, I love the beginning of Lolita, but only in retrospect. It's famous for a reason! But when I first read it I was annoyed and frustrated with it; I knew it was literary and lyrical, but I didn't want to sink into it yet. I just wanted to know who was talking and what the situation was before I could give a care. In fact, my favorite first line of any story is, and always has been since I first read it, a line that is about how bored the narrator (and possibly the writer) is by beginnings, how useless they are, and how it would really just be better if we could skip past it all to the part where we already know each other:
Oh my God, yes, I'm someone who still likes Salinger, so sue me. (More Franny and Zooey though, than Catcher, if that makes me look any better in your eyes.) But it's pretty goddamn meta, so maybe that's why.
So anyway, what are your favorite first lines? Do you like starting to read new things? Do you like meeting new people? Do you like beginnings? How do you feel about meta first lines? How much do you think about first lines? First paragraphs? Etc?
I just wanna be inside the story already; I don't actually like the slow get-to-know-you dance; the "do I like you/do you like me?" kind of thing. I hate it in real life too. I hate meeting people and I hate, "So what do you do? Are you married? Where did you go to school?" I even hate the, "How are you?" part of conversations, because the part of a conversation where you get to talking about how someone really is isn't until the meaty part of a conversation, which is often in the middle. (Even if someone answers, "How are you?" with "Dismal!" the part that's interesting is why.)
Re: getting-to-know-you--about people, I make snap judgments and find it hard to shake first impressions. I know this is wrong. The only way I've been able to adjust is not act on those judgments, or say anything about them. I just have to deal with them living in my head, knowing they're false, and this means I can't form any real opinion at all about anybody for quite some time. It just makes me impatient to get to the part where they've had a bunch of chances so I can see the ways in which they are truly good, fun, and educational (because people almost always turn out good, fun, and educational. I've rarely had it happen that they don't, which is nice).
Now, books don't always turn out good, fun, or educational, but so often they're one of the three. Sometimes they're educational in ways they're not meant to be (for instance, I read the Twilight series partly to educate myself about pop culture, other viewpoints, what kind of thing tickles other people's id. I've got to admit those books were fun, too, but also not in the way that they were probably meant to be). But the beginning parts of books now just feels like a slog up until the part where I really get invested, either in the characters or the plot or some kind of theme that is important to me.
I used to love starting new books. I remember I read Romeo and Juliet on my own in sixth grade. I found it pretty difficult, but as is usually the case with Shakespeare and me, I slowly slid into it until I didn't have to stop to "translate" anything at all. It was like learning a new language, and I loved that. When I'd read Victorian novels and high fantasy in high school, I loved those big walls of text wherein you don't know anyone and don't really understand the world or culture and can't really grasp the scope of the novel you're reading, and then slowly a plot emerges and you get to know characters you love (and hate) and it's this entire world you're living in.
But it's this that annoys me now. I know I know the language and want to speak it. I know I love that world and want to be in it. But instead I have to sit there and get these slow lessons on how to speak and what to say, as if each time I'm learning to be a part of a new culture, when I've already been a part of so many other cultures that I've lost count. These "lessons" (and my frustration with them) are not inherent to the specific text. They're inherent to myself, when it comes to language (i.e., I'm the one who has to learn; they don't have to teach me), and inherent to the whole idea of reading, when it comes to getting to know the world (i.e. every text is gonna put you in a new world that is singular to that text. Even fanfic does that!).
This might explain some of my eventual impatience with high fantasy (though the rest of it can be explained by a lot of repetition in the genre). I wonder what it has to do with fanfic? With fanfic, you don't have to get to know the characters or the world. All the introduction you've got to suffer through is that author's version of the characters and world, and where they're going to go with them.
I still have an easier time getting into fanfic than I do getting into original stuff, but I've got to say that two of my favorite fic authors of all time were authors whose fics I really had trouble getting into at first. One (
kita0610) because she had a singular style that was unfamiliar to me, and the other (mistful) because she had a singular characterization that was unfamiliar to me. While I'd been reading fanfic for years and years when I found both of these authors, I still think I had more patience then than I do now, and I was still too impatient to deal with getting-to-know-you at first. And these authors still stand out to me, both in fandom, but also out of all things that I've read. I'm sure there are other authors (both in fandom and out) who are as good, but there's still no other authors like them. It has to do with an originality, which requires a getting-to-know-you-process.But now that I'm thinking about it, there are fics where I feel like I really don't have to get-to-know that much. Insterestingly, this is less because the fics are "so canon" and rather because they're "so fanon". I've read about a thousand fics like it before and I'll probably read a thousand more.
This is the case with a lot of genre stuff too--you know, you just know, how a romance novel is going to go--but with genre pro fic you've still got to "get to know" the characters. You've got to be able to tell Cecilia apart from Margaret; you've got to know that Cecilia's the dark-haired buxom lass who's interested in Roger, and you've got to know that Roger's the knife thrower at the circus. Sometimes I think the packaging on romance novels, especially the blurbs and summaries, are to cut down on the irksome work of get-to-know-you, so you can get to the part where Cecilia ends up with Roger and Margaret tragically dies faster. It ups the comfort and lessens the work to get there.
Which is probably when I'm just looking for something really mindless to entertain me, I gravitate towards fanfic. You already know the names, descriptions, and who's going to end up with whom, which is more than you know most times on the first page of a romance novel. Romance AU fanfics are particularly comforting, because you're getting all the comfortingly predictable tropes of romance and the comforting predictability of who the characters are, what they look like, how they act and interact, etc.
Not liking beginnings is essentially lazy of me. I don't want to do the work to figure out what an author is doing, where a story is going to go, how the style will work out, who the characters are, etc. There's a lot to be learned in those parts of a story, just like meeting a person; it's instructive and mind-bending and really healthy.
That said, I do love a deeper get to know you. I hate learning your name and profession and what you did last night, but man, I do love learning why you love what you love and why you do the things you do and what your childhood was like. I love working beside someone for a year or two, that point when friendly acquaintance tips into friendship and you start hanging out and talking about things that are meaningful to you, when you only used to talk about work. Etc. All that stuff's great, and I tend to be way too circumspect and terrified of being awkward to jump right into the sort of questions and conversations I care about. Just like I'm terrified to skip the first chapter of a book.
But anyway, I just don't think about first lines that much, or first paragraphs. I know that readers who aren't me can be drawn in or tossed out by a first line, but oftentimes by the time I get to the first line, I'm already willing to read for at least a thousand words. After looking at my last twenty first lines, which sucked, I tried to find the ones I thought were my best. They were all meta:
![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif){kind=small}
chuck_writes on LJ, chuck_still_writes on im, Carver Edlund on Flying Wiccan Press) ever got on a fanfic went like this:
(The Chuck Writes Story (An Unauthorized Fandom Biography), Chuck Shurley, SPN)
Even though it's not meta, I still like:
. . . though I actually like the second line of this fic much better. The rhythm never was quite right in the first line.
My best first line is probably, the following:
It presents the main characters, gives you some background info, and also presents a very interesting situation that immediately has you asking questions. Why would you tell someone you gave them truth serum, does that mean the person gets a choice to drink it, or did he say that because he drank the wine, etc. Except I find it a total bore; that fic doesn't get interesting to me until you learn the answers to those questions; the first line isn't so well-phrased or delivered that you can be assured you're going to get interesting answers to the questions it presents.
When I think about literature, I love the beginning of Lolita, but only in retrospect. It's famous for a reason! But when I first read it I was annoyed and frustrated with it; I knew it was literary and lyrical, but I didn't want to sink into it yet. I just wanted to know who was talking and what the situation was before I could give a care. In fact, my favorite first line of any story is, and always has been since I first read it, a line that is about how bored the narrator (and possibly the writer) is by beginnings, how useless they are, and how it would really just be better if we could skip past it all to the part where we already know each other:
"If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth." (Catcher In The Rye, by J. D. Salinger)
Oh my God, yes, I'm someone who still likes Salinger, so sue me. (More Franny and Zooey though, than Catcher, if that makes me look any better in your eyes.) But it's pretty goddamn meta, so maybe that's why.
So anyway, what are your favorite first lines? Do you like starting to read new things? Do you like meeting new people? Do you like beginnings? How do you feel about meta first lines? How much do you think about first lines? First paragraphs? Etc?
been saving this because I wanted to think about it
Mid-story character entrances tend to be some of my favorites (do you feel differently about those than about beginnings, or do you also wish that they'd get on with it?) I'm talking about the part where we have already been grounded with/ gotten to know the viewpoint character and then they run into somebody new who changes the terms of the game. Maybe I patterned on The Wizard of Oz? Favorite character entrance ever, though, is Aragorn in the Fellowship movie.
Re: approaching character entrance as a writer -- in fanfic, where you assume most readers already know the characters, I always try for the character's entrance to portray them at their most essential, and for the first line they speak to sound like them, because that's the reader's signal of which Spike or Buffy or Tony or Steve they're going to get in this story, which elements of their many-faceted personalities the story is going to be about.
BTW, I never would have thought of this in relation to getting to know people in real life but it would actually be fascinating if they are related because I have a pretty hard time *remembering* people that I've met, and I usually have to be introduced once or twice before it sticks -- like, when my brother introduced me to the woman he's now married to, in the context of 'this is my new girlfriend' I basically went through all of dinner before we both established that we had in fact met before, at a group event, and were able to reconstruct conversations we'd had, but I still had no impression of meeting her before. I don't think this is a super unusual way to be -- I feel like I have similar conversations all the time re: folks who have met in casual group settings -- but for whatever reason I tend to be really conscious of it (maybe because I tend to babble to strangers a lot at social events so I'll be remeeting the person and going WHAT DO THEY ALREADY KNOW ABOUT ME?) And possibly, the level to which I am conscious of this makes me really want character introductions in my writing to stick.
For what it's worth, I like all the fist lines you list a lot. I don't think you necessarily have to be super conscious of them as a writer for them to have an impact on readers like me who are very interested in how a writer chooses to start a story.
/infinite babbling
Re: been saving this because I wanted to think about it
I love character introductions! Although I have to say I don't think about them very much. When reading, it's just a part of the story for me. I will notice if I feel like the character entrance is "written"--i.e., if it feels like the author is trying too hard to have a character make an entrance, or if I feel like the author is trying too hard to make me like the character. Otherwise, I just say, "okay, new person, whatever" and don't think much about it until they get knit into the plot. I usually don't like or dislike new characters, and only decide to like/dislike them once I've been with them for a while.
In writing, I try to introduce characters in a way that a) fits the character, b) fits the story. This basically means I don't think of character introductions as Character Introduction, but just as what happens next in the story. The part I do really think about is how soon a character gets introduced. I think it's generally bad form to introduce a character in the last quarter. Even the last half is a little sketchy. First quarter or third, I feel, should introduce the cast, and if someone doesn't get introduced they should at least get mentioned or hinted at. There are exceptions to every rule, of course.
Favorite character entrance ever, though, is Aragorn in the Fellowship movie.
Oh man, it's really good, right? That shot with the embers and his eyes and the shadows and ughhhhhhhhhhhhh ALL MY STRIDER FEELINGS. When I first read the books I was so in love with Strider. When I found out he was Aragorn I completely lost interest in him. I don't remember the books well enough to say how "accurate" the intro of Strider in the movies is, but I can say it fit all of the feelings/desires/expectations/hopes I had for a movie!Strider.
the level to which I am conscious of this makes me really want character introductions in my writing to stick.
This is really interesting. I think I'm pretty good at remembering people? Not really names, or personal information, but I know a familiar face.
I like all the first lines you list a lot
Thanks :o)